Prizes of the Balkan Rendezvous

OK, I’ve got to admit i get some twisted enjoyment from posting misleading titles to these pages.
“Teams”, when we don’t have teams; “Prizes” when we have so many prizes that you don’t know what i’m going to talk about.

OK, this page is about the prizes for the Balkan Rendezvous cycling event.

In other sections we talk about prizes for the skating events, for the competitions and a few other things that are going to be kept a secret until the final month.

There’s a section of our draft web site that describes all the different prizes for the cycling event.
Let’s be a bit cautious here and remind you not to take us literally with the exact amounts quoted on that page of the website because until we get contracts with our sponsors and the media, we can’t be totally certain of the amount.
It could be more and it could be less but we think our estimates are quite conservative.

Total cash prize money for the entire cycling event is estimated to be US$1,799,000.
That does not include the appearance fees and the value of food, accommodation, travel and other prizes in kind, like a car, holidays and a few other goodies which in total, will make the Balkan Rendezvous the richest cycling event in the world.

Of course, for the cyclists, their total earnings will be nothing like that of the top riders in the Grand Tours who, as team members of commercially sponsored teams, earn considerably more than any of our competitors.
I believe that the world’s top cyclists in the world’s top teams, earn up to US$150,000 a year which is nothing compared to what other top sports people earn in other sports.
Don’t forget, the Balkan Rendezvous is for non-professionals or any cyclist from the Balkans who has never won a stage in any of the Grand Tours.
That is our objective – to give potential cyclists the chance to improve their experiences in the hope that one day, they will be capable of earning a place in the big money, commercial teams.
We expect talent scouts to be swarming over the course.

Back to the prize money –
For all 21 stages, prize money on offer is expected to go down to 10th place and overall, as far as 20th place for overall points winners.
That, as i’ve said before, remains subject to successful negotiations with sponsors and the media.

We genuinely believe that we will reach that target but the final amounts will be announced here on our Updates and formalised in the multi-lingual web site.

Now, all you guys out there who want a slice of the action, start training
and we’ll see you there.